


Asleep

by Kit_SummerIsle



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: M/M, TFP:AU, Torture, nothing explicit though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-09-20 05:51:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9478421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit_SummerIsle/pseuds/Kit_SummerIsle
Summary: When the high caste rulers of Cybertron frowned upon a gladiator speaking of change, they sent him a message first. A bloody message to learn from.Megatronus learned from it. Just not the intended lesson...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt is a long ago one, and I don't remember where I read it. Probably on Lj, but not sure who it is from. Anyhow, back then I planned a long, chaptered fic from it, which has never got written and now it probably won't either. So I pulled together the pieces I wrote and made them into a much shorter one, because the idea is definitely worth a fic. So here it is now...

_He should be making a move soon_ , Megatronus thought suddenly. The young, naïve archivist’s infatuation with the rough Kaon gladiator who wrote political pamflets between death matches was painfully obvious from the first klik they met and got steadily worse during their meetings. They talked, cautiously at first, enthusiastically then for finding a completely unlikely kindred spirit in the other, and deeply at last, sharing plans and wishes so deep and unorthodox neither of them shared with anymech else before. The enormous gaps between caste and circumstances ceased to matter when he was with the diminutive archivist whose ideas meshed so perfectly with his, whose kind and peaceful nature complemented his own rough and violent one so much so it was wholly unexpected and absolutely impossible. They shouldn’t have been so much like two sides of a credit, inseparable and natural together after only a few meetings and talks. They shouldn’t feel like conjunx endurae what with all the deep chasms of caste, occupation, nature and frame between them. 

But no, Orion Pax’s yearning to be more than a friend, more than a confidante, more than an adviser was very much obvious. It showed on his expressive faceplates that blushed so easily, it shone clearly in those kind blue optics that followed his frame’s movements avidly, it spoke clearly in his tone when he addressed the gladiator on matters of importance and weighty ideas that would… could change their world. Megatronus could only hope that his own visceral desires were not so much obvious, that he could still keep a cool processor around the young Iaconian and not consume him with his burning red optics as they followed that slim frame, those long legs, that pert aft that had his fans start up and his spike twitch and had to be ordered to stay behind his panel… or maybe they were and he was just deluding himself.

But he was still towering over the Archivist by one full frame, he was still massing thrice more than the Archivist did with berth and all considered… and if frames were proportional, which Megatron knew they were, then his spike would tear the young mech apart as surely as his servos would him in the arena floor surrounded by the roar of the energon-hungry crowd. That was the one and only consideration that held him back so far but it was a strong barrier to his desire and one Orion Pax with all his knowledge and wisdom belying his youth has not appeared to consider yet. Megatronus didn’t know a way to overcome that mismatch of frames, certainly not one available to one of their status and caste or their financial state for that matter. Frame modification was for the richest and most powerful of the elite – or for the unfortunate victims of empurata, neither end of the social spectrum is available or indeed desirable for them. 

But he still should say something, admit and declare his feelings to Orion, so that they could work out something together… there was always tactile and hardline and various toys his fellow gladiators so cheerfully suggested to him when he appeared to refuse all their advances and took no pleasurebot or buymech to his berth, that could be utilized instead of a full interface that was so inadvisable for them. With emotions so clearly going for each other, with natures, ideas and dreams so obviously complementing them, they could surely make the more physical part of this work… couldn’t they? With want, need and will on both their sides they could not only change Cybertron – of this Megatronus was surer than his own designation – but also overcome the trifle matter of incompatible sizes and proportions. 

Yes, he would try to guide their next conversation, which was coming up the next orn if schedules were to be believed, towards this matter. Orion Pax was, as his caste’s traditions demanded and his upbringing taught, shy and timid, not a mech to speak outright of his desires or wants, not even to the one he actually desired to be with. It complicated matters enormously as Megatronus was not used to mince words or find polite, acceptable synonyms for natural, normal, frame-necessitated needs and activities. Namely interfacing. But Orion Pax’s cute audial antennas were canted backwards embarrassed even from a relatively mild lewd joke a fellow gladiator threw at them while passing them on a corridor and once he read out a text mentioning interfacing just in a clinical sense with a tone nearly choking. 

Megatronus shifted on his berth and smiled slightly. Alone for the recharge cycle, not watched by any mechs, gladiators, spectators, guards, in his meager quarters he could allow the softer emotions to appear on his faceplates. The little archivist had awakened these in him again after the harsh realities of the arena that allowed no sentimentalism and no caring if he wanted to stay alive. But he could care for Orion Pax and he could trust him, love him… the little archivist had not a single violent strut in his frame, no hidden agenda in his processor, not a shred of malice in his pure spark. He was a singularly clear and shining gem in the corrupt and violent world Cybertron was fast becoming, a rare find that deserved so much better than him, a coarse and uncouth gladiator… but he was lucky to gain the adoration of such a mech, Megatron had no idea how, but they had fallen for each other and fallen hard somewhere along the way.

_::Megatronus.::_

_::Yes Soundwave?::_

The silent mech would not disturb his recharge if it wasn’t important. Megatronus was up and awake in kliks and turning towards the small console beside his berth. It lit up with incoming transmission and the gladiator accepted the video call. But all it showed an empty, dark but foreboding room.

_::What is it?::_

_::Being streamed from… Iacon. Senatorial datastamp. Marked for your optics only.::_

Megatron turned puzzled optics back towards the screen still showing the dark room. Senatorial datastamp? His movement and writings had gathered a following, but he didn’t think that it reached quite that high yet. Of course the Secret Service didn’t quite advertised its interests but he rather thought that Soundwave could detect their snooping around before it became serious. But then… Soundwave was not omniscient and couldn’t see into Iacon itself, couldn’t follow what happened in high circles… Suddenly a terribly cold premonition took his spark into its servo and squeezed it hard.

It proved to be right. In the next klik the room was illuminated and he could see it for what it was – a torture chamber, confirming his worst suspicions. Enforcer thugs dragged a much smaller frame into the room, the slender, red-blue frame giving them no protest or fight, but they were still rough with him intentionally. Megatron’s servos tightened to fists and he raged inside. He couldn’t do anything. Even if he departed to Iacon this very klik, they couldn’t find Orion in time, couldn’t free him, couldn’t prevent what he felt in his spark was coming to him. 

_::Arena is surrounded. Leaving impossible. Signal masked, tracing impossible fast enough.::_

Soundwave supplied to him the facts like always. They were cold, hard and unacceptable. Nevertheless they were facts and he had to bow to them. He stared at the screen where Orion Pax’s small frame was chained to a contraption, spread out and vulnerable, his light, civilian armor already dented and scratched from rough handling. A single line of glowing energon held his stare as it oozed down from split lipplates and Megatron lamented inwardly that he had never dared to kiss those delectable lips. Fear danced in wide, blue optics but Orion was silent, probably asking his questions, saying his words of confusion as the Enforcers dragged him from his tiny home or the silent halls of the Library… and by now he knew he’d get no answer to them.

Senator Ratbat stepped in front of him and his haughty stare bored into his processor through the camera pickup. The Enforcers stood to the side, menacing and foreboding in their sneering visage. The Senator wore a disgusted and sneering expression and his tone was ice-cold as he started to speak.

“I have learned that you dream of a station far beyond you, gladiator and that this worthless archivist dared to encourage you in the useless effort of rebelling against the sacred caste system. Needless to say that as a criminal he has no rights any more and I may do as I wish with him. As for you, slave, you will die in the Arena anyhow, so no further action needed there. But this wretch… he will be used to give you a message. A message of what are the consequences of rebelling against the law and your betters.”

The Senator stepped aside and Megatronus once again saw the blue optics of Orion, now wide and bright with fear. The archivist swallowed once uneasily and glanced around at the room, at the stony faceplates of the Enforcers, the sneering disdain of the Senator. His plating trembled but he spoke up suddenly, staring straight into the camera to show he was not talking to anymech in the torture chamber…

“Megatronus… I’m sorry, I couldn’t go, they caught me… I’m sorry. For… everything… I wish... I said… I l...”

But he couldn’t finish his babbling words for his helm was grabbed by large servos, a gag was roughly pushed between still bleeding lips and he choked on whatever he was trying to say. Megatron bared fangs at the screen, promising a thousand death to them all… but he was not there, he could do nothing, he was powerless to stop what was happening, what was coming…

Orion screamed through the gag as the whip tore through his light armor like it was tissue paper, shredded wires and burned sensors that never felt anything harsher than a bump into a doorframe or an accidental fall. His optics flickered, brightened and shut down as ruthless servos mercilessly torn apart his frame, torturing, raping, mutilating and shredding him until barely a ruin remained, bleeding and sparking while Megatronus watched with spark cold as ice and processor spinning out revenge plans, detached, refusing to bow to the fear the Senator intended him to feel… only fear for Orion, who would probably not survive this. 

 

-o-o-o-

 

“I want all the best surgeons and psychiatrists!”

Cybertron, barely silenced and very much terrified of its new ruler, cowers and sends the best medical professionals posthaste to the rebuilt Iacon Palace – once the home of the long forgotten Primes, more recently the lair of the rich and elite Senators and now once more a palace to the planet’s new ruler, the former miner, gladiator and warlord: the Lord High Protector Megatron. Very few knows why he needs them and those mechs, the members of his inner circle, his trusted lieutenants, advisors and warriors do not tell the tale. None survived who was in any way connected to those horrifying events so no news make their ways outside the decorated gates. Life grinds on, changes happen, society is reformed and this takes all the attention of the population. In the whirlpool of such huge changes the small matter of some medics kept in the palace for whatever mysterious work is quickly forgotten.

In the center of the palace, surrounded by guards and secrecy, swarmed by servants and medics, in a small white room lies the broken, mauled, maimed frame of Orion Pax. He slept through most of the insurgence, all of the war and horrors, put into a stasis pod as soon as Soundwave managed to steal his mangled frame miraculously still alive and found a medic capable of patching his remaining torso up enough to survive the vorns-long stasis. He sleeps still, but his screams still echo in Megatron’s audials, his pain still wracks his spark and occasionally horrible pictures that did not stem from the war play in his processor when he tries to recharge. He visits the small room every dark cycle when even the medics rest. He had visited where the stasis pod was hidden as often as war allowed it, so he could never forget the message they sent to him as warning. He watches now as the slender frame is rebuilt into the one he keeps in his memories, whole and healthy, smiling shyly up to him, conviction burning in his gentle optics as he explains one thing or another to the uneducated gladiator…

Megatron knows that he cannot give him back the innocence that was so horribly torn from him. He cannot unmake the horrors, he cannot delete what happened. He cannot even give him back Megatronus, the mech Orion used to love, for that mech is destroyed by war and sins and necessities he had to allow, hardened, darkened and fearing that love was burned out of his spark along with all the gentler emotions. But he intends to do everything in his power, in Cybertron’s power, in any race’s knowledge and power to make Orion Pax whole again. He knows and the medics often remind him of this fact that the former archivist might never stand beside him again, might never come to terms with what was done to him and might not ever regain or even relearn sanity. 

He takes that risk and will decide what to do when or if that happens. He rules Cybertron to the best approximation of what he and the more idealistic archivist envisioned as a fair and just society… but he couldn’t forget atrocities that were done to him and others. Crimes had been committed that were not excused by necessities of war. Crimes were committed that went beyond anything any mech might consider acceptable for a goal. He committed some of those too, Megatron knows. It doesn’t make him falter when he signs the execution orders for mechs who committed rape and torture, empurata and mind-wrecking, mass murder or infanticide. Ornly he learned a new horror as the war entered its final, desperate stages, ornly he and Soundwave had to put down a new horrifying item to the list of absolutely inexcusable and unforgivable sins. Unless they purge those crimes and the mechs who had committed them, he could hope for no healthy society. 

He considers it a cleansing, one that he is most definitely not the best suited mech to deliver – but he is the only one who could. Once he cut the rot out, the laws will never allow any such horrors to be visited upon any member of the society, not even on prisoners. He purposefully limits his own power by instituting checks and balances into the system – for he knows himself best and knows that his anger, his fury and temper needs those constraints. No dictator, no ruler, no council of mechs should have absolute power ever again, he vows, for no mech is perfect. He yearns for the calm, gentle influence of Orion Pax to balance his violent nature – but they have torn that away from them and the mech when he awakens will never be that innocent and idealistic spark he used to be. 

They rebuild him to be slightly bigger, slightly better armoured, stronger and capable of defending himself, while retaining his overall shape and form – though Megatron vows never to let him come to harm again, he intends to give him a measure of safety in his own strength, an ability to defend himself if he so wishes. The psychiatrists approve this too. They say it will help him to feel safe once again. Megatron doubts that too, but maybe they do know better. Orion used to have such a well of optimism and quiet determination in him that he never understood fully – it might have been deep enough to survive now… to survive into living again.

This dark cycle the Lord High Protector of Cybertron stands in that room after observing the medics straighten up for the last time and silently watches as they leave, like he does every evening. They glance at him and nod respectfully as they leave, none daring to speak to him. Megatron steps into the white room and stops by the berth, one battle-scarred servo touching a red plate, caressing it gently... The frame is whole now, the shape is familiar, the colours as bright as they used to be long ago. All it remains is to let him wake up and see the new world, the one Megatron built for the whole of Cybertron… for the two of them… for him. 

He hopes to see the blue light of those long shut optics – and Orion Pax in them again.


	2. Epilogue

Orion watched Cybertron through the viewport as they made their final approach. The planet grew slowly until he could – almost – see the largest details here and there. The scars from the war, the largest ones were still faintly visible, but overall, it looked far more healthy than a few vorns ago, when he fled from it in panic and terror. Lights twinkled on the dark side, cities, settlements, far more than before, speaking about enough energon to be used on lightning streets and structures – another sign of the changes he heard while away. 

Maybe he was wrong those vorns ago. Maybe pain and terror confused what he saw and what he could not believe. Maybe that stranger, who looked out of Megatronus’s optics when he woke up was not such a stranger after all, not a creature of the Senate, not a twisted and lying monster… like Ratbat had said so gloatingly, so cruelly... Orion wasn’t sure of anything he saw and he couldn’t believe anything that was said. Not after that night, no. 

So waking up to look at somemech that looked similar to Megatronus, but a stranger none the less… it was jarring. In one klik he sank into oblivion as agony slowly consumed him – the next he woke up whole and healthy and assured by that stranger-but-still-not that everything was fine and he shouldn’t worry. Naturally he panicked. Hampered by a frame that wasn’t himself, his suspicions seemingly confirmed by the same thing, he couldn’t listen to what Megatron - _Megatronus? His spark whispered yes, but he just couldn’t believe it_ \- told him. It had to be a lie. Ratbat said so – they would twist the gladiator, Shadowplay would make him a ghost in his armor, a shell, a traitor, a liar… 

… so he fled. Megatron – this strange, new, darker and bitter version he couldn’t believe in – didn’t stop him. Nomech did. That should have been a sign that things really, truly changed, but he was panicking and fled in terror and didn’t stop until he was off of Cybertron and on his way to a planet with no mechs at all on it. Earth was nice and blessedly organic and even the strangeness of its small creatures were more welcome than dreams he woke up from screaming or strange processors he couldn’t trust. He couldn’t trust his own either. He could be imagining the whole thing, including Megatron and the new order on Cybertron, for whatever nefarious reason Trepan could make up. It took him vorns to accept that nomech came after him with malice, that nomech wanted to use or deceive him, that what the Universe’s various traders and adventurers spoke about his homeworld was… _had to be true_. No mnemosurgeon could reprogram organic brains and not even the Senate could or would manipulate the whole Universe’s myriad of races to weave a web of lies to entrap a single, unimportant, lonely mech. 

And so Orion slowly started to reach out towards Cybertron, started to learn what Megatron – _not Megatronus, not any more, that still appeared true_ – changed, created and shaped there. The new Cybertron looked to be a very different place from the one he had known. No castes, no classes, no Senate – no starving mechs on the streets and no nobles in luxurious palaces either. Megatron – the new one, who was called Lord High Protector ruled it and ruled it well. Orion, once he could look past his fears, recognized the things and ideas they were talking and debating about, recognized them to be put into practice and saw how they worked. Some things were different, some minor changes were present, but overall… overall, this Cybertron was worth to return to. Even with that stranger, with the strange light shining from Megatron’s optics. Maybe… maybe because of him too. Orion was wrong about the whole thing being a lie, so he might be wrong about… Megatronus as well. 

And so one day – he adopted Earth’s idioms – he sat down by his comms console and with trembling servos pulled up the folder containing the bunch of messages from him, veritable thousands sent to him over the vorns, those that he didn’t dare to read so far, those he was afraid of being more lies, more sparkbreak and more pain. But now he steeled his resolve and started to read. 

An orn later he was on a trading ship speeding towards the nearest spaceport where he could find a ship that hailed at Cybertron. He still had the last of the messages downloaded to a datapad held in his servo now. He read the last of them on board already and finished not that long ago. Now he was just gazing out of a viewport, looking at Cybertron, seeing it for real… but seeing also a pair of optics, dimmed with sadness, how he saw him last.

How wrong he was., how mislead by fear… Orion wasn’t the kind to curse anymech, but he wished the former Senator Ratbat all the nastiness in the Pit for poisoning his processor and separating him from Megatronus… what he did to Orion himself too, but this last act of deception from beyond his grave was even worse. 

He could have stood by Megatronus’s side all those vorns ago – and Ratbat, first with his thugs, then with his poisoned words took that from him twice over. For… it wasn’t a stranger in Megatron’s optics, it was just a mech changed by war and loss and hard decisions, separated by vorns while Orion slept… but it was still the Megatronus he remembered all too well, achingly, lovingly. His messages, the words, the style, the sweeping prose that nomech could imitate showed him that beyond doubt. 

A joor later he stood by the ramp as it lowered, anxious, but apprehensive too to step out of the ship, somewhere deep inside still a little afraid what he would see… 

“Orion!”

The knot inside unraveled, Orion’s invent hitched and his spark swelled.

“Megatronus…” He whispered quietly, but it was heard and he didn’t have to look up much to find that pair of optics, now shining with joy and emotions and maybe some optical lubricant as well.

His own too. He was home. He was home and Megatronus was there and maybe, maybe after so long, things that were torn asunder could finally be remade and heal. Looking up to those optics Orion felt hopeful for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to a nice comment I did write a sort of closure for them, a short epilogue. :-)


End file.
